


On Pins and Needles

by slashyrogue



Series: Shoegazerx Art Fics [11]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hellraiser (Freeform)
Genre: A bit fluffier than it should be, Hannibal is Pinhead, Hellraiser AU, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating will change, allusions to torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-01-23 05:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12499372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashyrogue/pseuds/slashyrogue
Summary: Will Graham finds a strange box on his father's shelf at eight years old and meets the pin faced man who is much more fascinating than he should be.Twelve years later he finds his childhood home empty, his father gone, and a message written in blood on the wall:I AM WAITING TO HEAR YOU SCREAMinspired by fan art by @shoegazerx on tumblr





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shoegazerx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoegazerx/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the amazing fan art here: 
> 
> http://shoegazerx.tumblr.com/post/156530569556/rough-rough-hellraiserxhannibal-mash-up-we-have

The box is so pretty that he can’t help but want to touch, lifting it off the high shelf in his father’s room.

 

It’s carved, intricate pieces that remind Will of the wooden puzzles his father has that he’s been told once belonged to his mother “god rest her soul.”

 

One touch and Will is hooked, working and working till the pieces all fall into place.

 

He doesn’t expect the portal, the monster, his eyes wide as the man with the pins reaches out to take the box where it fell in Will’s fear.

 

“Will,” the man’s voice is smooth, “Pity you’re so young. You look just like your mother, I’m certain you scream like her too.”

 

Will is frozen, the touch to his cheek is like ice.

 

“Fascination doesn’t go away,” the man says, “I am certain yours won’t either.”

 

The man disappears and the box closes, Will trembling as he looks at it.

 

He won’t touch it again.

 

Of course he won’t.

 

Years later his father is taken in the night, the words I AM WAITING TO HEAR YOU SCREAM written in blood on the wall though the box sits forgotten on the floor but Will knows.

 

The man with the pins did this.

 

He resists the urge to open the box here and now, instead pocketing it in order to start researching.

 

It could be a lure, his father dead, but Will can’t resist.

 

He wants to save his father, yes. But the fascination has only gotten stronger.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The puzzle box was one of those pieces that were well known but not known at all. 

Will had walked into shops where people offered him plenty of money for the piece but no concrete answers and even the Internet was a bust. Though every previous owner had been brutally murdered or disappeared, just like Will's mother. 

His father had always insisted the box was his mother's, a priceless heirloom that wasn't to be touched. Most of his mother's past was just that: not to be touched. He hardly remembered her, vague images of a smile just for him. 

If the box had been hers, would the pin faced man know what happened to her? He'd made her scream, Will knew that, but had he killed her as well? 

What was behind the portal? 

He wanted to know what was beyond the light very badly and not just because he worried for his father. 

After days of looking for answers to explain the box, the pin faced man, and the blood, Will decided to start looking through his father's things. 

Robert Graham had never been very open or affectionate a father, though Will wasn't one to beg for anyone's attention even now. But he'd drilled into Will the need to keep the right path, the good path, leading Will into his teaching profession and even the need to rescue strays. They weren't a close family but his father was the man he'd strived to grow up to be. 

After Will found the safe in his father's closet and began reading the journals, he knew that Robert Graham was not the man he had grown up thinking he was. 

The very first line he read said it all: 

Blood looks black in the moonlight. 

As the journals went on, Will grew more and more angry. His father had made a mistake and he spent nearly twenty years paying for it, appeasing the monsters in the portal. Fascination, it seemed, ran in the family. 

It all started with a man named Hannibal. 

His mother had seen the psychiatrist since before Will was born, her irrational thoughts and strange melancholy littered the entirety of the married life. 

But the sessions turned into a sore spot for Robert, an unhealthy fixation on the idea that Helen was having an affair with Doctor Lecter turned into a ravenous certainty practically overnight. 

The box had not always belonged to his mother it seemed, the idea of a fitting punishment an obsession that brought the monsters into their lives. 

Robert wrote of the giddiness before giving Helen the box, his excitement, and then weeks went by before he wrote again. 

The monsters had torn her apart before taking her, his horror and pleasure at the sight was evident in the descriptions as he watched smiling. 

Will's anger at the obvious happiness his father felt made it hard to breathe, his nails digging into the journal as he read. 

Helen hadn't been the only one to receive the box. 

A week after his mother disappeared, his father sent the box to Hannibal Lecter. 

He'd been angry and annoyed at Will choosing to get sick at the time, his monitoring of the Doctor's progress was halted while he tended to his toddler missing the show.

Though he'd seen the aftermath in Doctor Lecter's office, blood and gore splattered throughout with no sign of the box anywhere. 

Robert Graham spoke of his punishments with relish, everyday commenting that he hoped they both rot in hell at the bottom of the pages for a year. 

That was until the box was returned by a monster with Hannibal Lecter's face. 

Somehow Robert was able to talk the demon into making a trade: twenty years of freedom for an endless supply of souls. 

The journal then began to list every single person his father had sacrificed to keep himself from a fitting punishment. 

He imagined most of them were innocent lambs to a never ending slaughter, though a few had notations of why they'd been chosen and why his father was more than happy to see them go. 

As Will went through the journals he could do little else, so engrossed as days passed that he only stopped because his own name written in the list. 

He was almost afraid to read on, his hand shaking as he turned the page. 

'The monster made a request today,' it read in a shaky scrawl, 'It wants Will and no others will do.' 

Will looked at the large stack he'd already gone through, a single unfinished journal still waiting to be read. 

He was almost afraid to read on, his hand shaking as he turned the page. 

'I haven't answered Will's calls from school for nearly a month, but his last scared me he may come home so I picked up the phone. 

He believed the things I told him, as he always has, and I ignored the idea of him visiting.'

Will had stopped getting phone calls from his father the second year of college, home visits balked at as they would meet oftentimes in restaurants by campus until he graduated. 

Then home visits had been dismissed every year until recently when he'd finally told his father he was coming. 

"There is no reason for you to come here."

The words had stung, leaving Will to stay away another year until he called nonstop for almost a week deciding to come anyway finding the bloody words and empty home. 

Will swallowed his fear, turning the page and closing his eyes after reading the first line. 

'Will has no idea the sacrifices I've made for him.'

He remembered his mother, screaming in agony as monsters tore into her. 

He remembered the pin covered man, Hannibal Lecter, somehow joining them. 

Will remembered feel his father's glee leading unsuspecting strangers to their deaths, the rightness of it. 

He opened his eyes and looked at the journal again, tears forming as he read the rest of the page. 

'I begged for his life today. My boy, he leaves me messages and acts annoyed at my pushing him away but that is all I can do. The monster doesn't want me.'

Will can't imagine what horrible thing his father gave in return to give him another year. 

He didn't want to know, but a story left unfinished was no story at all.


End file.
